As a writer, Donna Di Novelli is a sought-after collaborator in opera, music-theater and film. Her latest opera, Before the Night Sky, written with composer Randall Eng, was presented at Town Hall by Opera America’s New Works Forum on January 13th. Her first screenplay, Stag has screened and garnered awards in festivals around the world (Montreal, Trieste, Toronto, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Williamsburg, Manhattan, Albuquerque, among others) including “Best of New York” and a Gold Remi for Drama. Stag stars Sarah Steele, Peter Rini and Rachel Jett.The Good Swimmer, a pop requiem created with composer Heidi Rodewald and directed by Newbury was seen in a First Look workshop January 7-17th at the Prototype Festival and is scheduled for a subsequent production. Her latest film work is on a Josephine Decker feature film, Movie No.1 as a co-writer. The film, starring Molly Parker and Miranda July is scheduled for release in 2017. She was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera to write the libretto for Christopher Theofanidis’ Heart of a Soldier, directed by Francesca Zambello and starring Thomas Hampson and Melody Moore in the title roles. She wrote the lyrics for Rachel Portman’s Little House on the Prairie, with book by Rachel Sheinkin. The musical, based on the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, premiered at the Guthrie Theater, breaking all previous box office records, and subsequently toured nationally. Di Novelli’s libretto for Oceanic Verses, conceived by Paola Prestini, was presented at NYC’s River to River Festival, the Kennedy Center and the Barbican Center in London, following a residency at Sound Res in Puglia, Italy. The score is available on VIA records. Another work with Prestini, Distance, was seen at BAM’s Next Wave Festival [21c Liederbend]. She wrote text and translated Latin hymns for Hildegard: A Measure of Joy, commissioned by the San Francisco Grammy-winning vocal ensemble, Chanticleer. She collaborates often with Randall Eng, most notably on the genre bending, jazz-infused opera, Florida, presented at NYCO’s Vox program and the Public Theater’s New Work Now! festival. Di Novelli has written text for the Los Angeles Modern Dance and Ballet’s Twelve Dancing Princesses and her radio plays have been broadcast on the BBC, CBC, and NPR. Her stage play, The First Eff (Mark Taper Forum) was excerpted in New Monologues For Women; By Women (Heinemann Press). Her work was published in the Debate’s Society 15-Second Plays collection. She has won commissions and fellowships from the Manhattan Theater Club, ASCAP, Mabou Mines, Houston Grand Opera, the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio, Italy), the National Musical Theater Conference, the MacDowell Colony, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Besides teaching libretto writing in the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, she teaches playwriting at the National Theater Institute at the O’Neill Theater Center and was a visiting professor at Brown University, where she earned a master’s degree in playwriting studying with Paula Vogel. She is a member of the New York Women in Film and Television, and the Dramatists Guild.